M as a human. I'm gonna share knowledge that's important to me with another individual in order to bring them in. I affirm you, I'm willing to kind of share my lot with you. On this episode of the Burgrease Podcast, we're exploring the secret world of white tail hunters. I want to know why these rascals keep secrets, who they share them with, but also who they're holding out on. The answers might surprise you, and if you listen, you just might learn something about the people you think are your friends, but also yourself. You may be more slippery than you think and not as pure in motivation as you think. We're going to interrogate two hardened white tail hunters and wring the truth out of them. We'll talk with an anthropologist about deep human psychology and learn how social media has changed how we distribute information. You're not gonna want to miss this one without your son knowing. Have you ever showed those pictures to someone that you told him you weren't going to believe it or not? Yeah, my name is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land presented by f HF gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I have a secret. This secret has plagued me, causing me to consistently lose sleep over the last two years. It's caused irrational excitement but also grievous pain. I have exercised extreme caution in the dissemination of information regarding this secret, and it might surprise you who I've shared the information with and who it's been withheld from. It's clear why people keep secrets, but it's not so clear why people tell them, and oh they do, and I'm in search of why. The choices I've made about my secret have been more instinctual than conscious. I've released information with strict stipulations, and every time I've done it, I've wondered if my trust would be betrayed, and I'm certain that at times it has. Interestingly, my secret didn't have to be shared for me to read the potential reward of it. I didn't have to share it with anyone, but some madness beyond conscious choice. Drove my wandering lips to mumble. It drove my fingers to type messages that had information that I wanted no one to know about, or maybe I did want them to know. While sitting thirty feet up in a walnut tree on November one one, I had a peculiar revelation. This thing that I was hiding was the thing I most wanted to share with the world. It was an odd paradox, a moment of internal confliction wrought with irony. I recognized that I was being driven by leverages. I wasn't pushing, perhaps a mechanism as old as mankind. If there's one thing I've learned growing up in rural America, it's that hunters have secrets. I've spent a lifetime trying to unravel why some are so reckless and others are like a sealed bank vault. I've also evaluated my own prepensive to mumble things best left unspoken. But one thing is consistent. Hunters love to talk, and if you listen, you'll learn a lot. We're about to hear two exclusive expose interviews with some men who have been hardened by decades of immersion into the white tailed world. I want to know why and how these accomplished white tail hunters keep and distribute their secrets, and Ludi laude do they have them? These men know every trick in the book and have used them all. And because of the gravity of his conscience, Mo Shepherd has put his reputation on the line. Here's Mo, you better buckle up on your cellular phone. How many pictures of white tailed deer do you have that our secret that you would not show just a stranger? Several several? How many you can you give me a number? I probably dozen pictures probably that wouldn't show anybody unless they was really close friends or something that I was, that we were hunting together, and then I might still not show them. So why wouldn't you show somebody? Like if if you were just at Walmart down here and you met a guy and he was a hunter, and you're like, hey, look at this, look at this picture, why wouldn't you do that? But for starters, even if I didn't know the guy very well, he might know somebody that knows me very well, and he said the deer I wanted to hunt or was trying to hunt, or had been hunting, and he says, Hey, I've seen a loo up there to day, and he showed me a picture of his marsh buckle. You know, I've been seeing his truck park over there in such and suchs on this road out there, on public land, on this national forest. That must be where he's hunting at. You know. But phrases and stuff together, they could crack you down. Okay, So from what you've said, it's clear to me that you've thought this through multiple stages. So how many times have you done that to someone else? Sah? Because I know that if you know that people do this, it's because you've done it. Yeah, that's why I said several, many, if not most, of the things we do as humans happen beyond the purview of our conscious choice. Part of the reason we're still here on planet Earth is that we've developed strategies for survival, and the foundation of all of it is the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge is the vehicle by which we acquire the essential material things for survival, like food, mates, skills, et cetera. We constantly use the clues around us to gain knowledge, whether looking at how crowded a restaurant parking lot is to determine how good the food is, or noting that the same truck has been parkinger a big, old wide oak ridge for three days straight during deer season. We're hungry for knowledge. Much of it is unconsciously filed away. Thomas Jefferson once wrote knowledge is power, knowledge is safety, and knowledge is happiness. Jefferson didn't create this idea, but he put words around something very old. Humans want knowledge, and it's the key to success. The way in which we distribute the knowledge we have is as important as the gaining of knowledge or information we don't have. We gain information and give information at its foundational level. This is the architecture of daily human life. The second white tail secret holder whose conscience has become too heavy a burden to carry without confession is Rusty Johnson. Here he is. How many bucks on your cellular phone? Do you have pictures of on your phone that you could not show me without breaking your word to someone? Just an estimate, I'd say at least a dozen, at least it doesn't okay? Now, are these pictures that you have gotten that you have made a vow that you're gonna show no one? Or are these pictures that people have shared with you that you have swore that you would not share. I would say a combination of my own pictures and my son's pictures without your son knowing. Have you ever shown those pictures to someone that you told him you weren't going to believe it or not? Yeah? Okay? But but I mean it's like one or two people? Who do you share white tails secrets with? Uh? Only two people? Really? I mean who are so described the relationship you have with These two people have to say their names. One is my son, okay, and the other is a really good friend. Okay. Now I know some intell about you. You have a wider knit group of people that you hunt with. Are you telling me that there are things between you and your son that are not shared inside of that wider communities? Okay? And my dad, But my dad's kind of he's out of this is important. See, if we were in a criminal trial here, you would be held in contempt of court if you had said you're working a lot. So your dad is a part of this, he is, Okay, So close knit family, m M. Very interesting. Dad's can often be the vow busters of white tail secrets. But I bet there's more to this. Here's Mosley. Okay, has someone shared a deer picture with you that you swore to secrecy that you'd never share, that you shared you did share with someone? Tell the truth. I'm thinking it's a long awkward pause, staring off into the distance. I don't think I have because I, okay, now this this, I know how this goes down. I say i'd send you a text, and I go, hey, I'm gonna send you a picture and I don't want you to send it to anyone ever. And then when you get home you show it to your wife. I mean, you've already done what you said you weren't gonna do. Or this is the other way it happens. You end up showing it to a guy in Illinois and you justify it because you're like, this is totally irrelevant information to this guy. He's not. So I'm gonna read I'm gonna ask you the question again and give you a chance to be honest with me. Okay, have you ever shared a photo with someone that you said you never would? Yes? Or And I told the person that showed me the photo that would maybe one time, and he said the answer had to be yes, yes one time? And it was to my wife. Very interesting. Again, wives seem to have some val busting capabilities too. Let's get deeper. Here's curly. How how would you feel if you shared a picture of a deer with someone and then you found out that they had shared that picture with someone else if I had asked them not to share it, I would be disappointed. What level of disappointment would you go fist fight them? Would you? The level of disappointment would be that I would not send them anything else or sharing you would? You would? They would lose that trust, They would lose my trust. Yeah, wouldn't cost a friendship or nothing. I would just definitely lose a great fist fought anybody over a deer? Uh? No, way back. I did almost get into a fist fight over a fishing spot. Oh for yeah, way back though. So it bowled down to I had some fish found, and I had a small boat with a small motor, and they saw me fishing in that spot, and we fished the bass fishing. We fished bass tournaments, and so they knew where I had I had those fish located. They had a bigger boat with a bigger motor, and when we took off in this particular tournament. They beat me to that spot. It's anybody's lake, you know, it's a public lake. But still I thought that was a very unsportsman like and when, of course I was young back then. When I got back to the way in, I let him know about it, confronted him about it. I said, why did you go to my, uh, fishing spot? I said, well, this is anybody can go anywhere on this lake. It's a public lake. I said, yes, but I found those fish. You saw me fishing there, and you deliberately went to my spot, and boy, they started bowing up, you know, and that we didn't fight. We didn't fight, but we did have some words, and uh, we didn't speak for a while. When information is distributed like these guys saw Curly catching fish, even if it's not a purpose, it's clear that Curly had an expectation of how that knowledge would be handled, and when it wasn't, he got upset. We're getting deeper, here's Moseley. Have you ever had legitimate concern that showing a picture to someone family members, friends, would have resulted in them actually going to your hunting spot and hunting I have made the mistake a few times of a few people that I saw something big or sound, saw some big sign, And a couple of instances I had people to come back to a spot or I'd run into them there and they never hunted there before. They claimed it was just out of the blue that they were there, but I feared it was because we discussed it and they knew I was hunting in that area or something. So okay, well let's turn the tables here. How often has someone given you information that you capitalized on later? Very little? Because I'll tell the truth. I'm telling the truth very little that I've capitalized on most of the time. That's just the way I am. If if if they're a friend espasically of me or somebody that I've hunted with before, whatever, then if they tell me something, then I'll be straight up with him. I'll say, you know, I'm hunt that area once in a while, but you know, if you're gonna keep hunting in there, I'm not going to go in there, you know. But a total stranger that I've run across somewhere and heard him talking about something, that's a different story, and I have used that to my advantage especially. I've used it three or four times I've heard people talking about turkeys, hearing lots of turkeys, but they were so smart I couldn't do nothing with them. Okay, So you've said to me that if it's a friend that gives you information, you're gonna be real clearing up front with them. If it's a stranger that gives you information, it's fair game, fair game. Okay. Mo, that's a problem because there's there's multiple layers of friendship. Okay, So there's there's there's people that are in between stranger and friend, and so where is that line for instance? Well, first off, let me butt in on you here. First off, you have to be your own judge on what much information you let loose when it's somebody that's okay, we're putting personal responsibility on the person information out. Okay, give me a categorization of friends. Where does a fan like a direct family member fit on this? Family members are different from friends? Oh okay, so there's many stratifications. Now, wait a minute, I thought family was inbounds for sharing secrets and responsibly handling their seek grits. Not So it seems this is a bit more nuanced than I originally thought. Here's curly on why he keeps secrets. And I still haven't told you my secret. So why do you think you are so secretive about white? How's what caused my dad? Why? Because I learned growing up hunting with him. He got burnt a few times by some friends. He always taught me to be he's secretive about everything. But he was always really secretive about hunting and fishing. Really, so as a boy, your dad told you he was like, man, if you know where a deer is, you better keep it tight lipped, absolutely from a young boy. Yes, I mean we're we're talking like back in the eighties. Can you go into any kind of detail without names of what happened in those scenarios that branded your dad like this? Yeah. Uh, he had a friend that he had hunted with a little bit, and uh, that friend went into a certain spot. My dad had found a really good but we didn't have game cameras back then. But I mean he had found a good buck, seen this good buck, told this friend about this spot, and the friend didn't say a word to him and went in right behind his back and went there and killed that buck. How did your dad found out about it? Well, he saw the buck. I mean, the guy killed it and he brought it back into town and everything and was bragging about it. And of course, you know word of mouth. My dad does not. He doesn't get mad about things like that. But he just learned from He learned from it. Yeah, it did not ruin the friendship or anything like that. Uh really, Yeah, he's not one to get mad about stuff, he said. He just like, he just said, He's like, Okay, these interrogations should have us all thinking about ourselves. Do you keep secrets? Do you share the secrets of others? Be honest? How do you justify it when you do. There's an ancient statue in the country of Turkey, which is ironic because we know Turkey hunters are such liars, called the Statue of Dodginess. It's believed to been created in a year four twelve. It's a man standing beside his dog and he's holding up a lamp and he appears to be searching in the light cast by the lamp. It said that he's looking for an honest man. This is old stuff. It's clear that there are spectrums of secret keepers. Some people are loose lipped and others have tight lips. But one thanks for sure. We all have a strategy for how we disseminate and use information. This is deep human psychology and I continue to be fascinated by the things that governed our lives beyond our conscious control. Being aware of our actions and the way we make decisions is important stuff. You all know. Dr Dan Route from the Bear Grease Render. He's a professor of anthropology at John Brown University. Strangely, he seems to know a lot about secrets, and I want to get the details. We've been talking about hunting secrets, but we'll need to broaden our search criteria. Here's Dr Dan. Dr Dan, talk to me about the general ideas of the dissemination of knowledge amongst humans, which is like the most common We do this every single day of our life, from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed. We are distributing information. Just make me informed about human psychology and how we do that. Okay, So the gentleman who really wrote the book on exchange, and so that's what you're talking about. When we're talking about dissemination of knowledge. People are sharing knowledge that they have, but they're not broadcasting it near and far. Their selectively sharing information with others, and then that is an exchange. They're hearing things back and they're trading information in a sense that's called reciprocity. So the woman who really wrote the book on literal book and the name of the book, it's a French sociologist. The name of the book is the gift. The whole point of the entire book, Marcel Moss wrote it about a hundred years ago, is that every gift has strings attached. We every exchange has strings attached. I don't just give you something for free. I want something back, even my most well meaning thing, and certainly the thing that's been shared the most among humans for millennia. Long before we had money, long before we had products, long before we had an economy, long before we had brands of clothing or different things like that, was information. How do you make this stone tool, how do you hunt this animal? How do you engage in this agricultural activity of humanity? Was knowledge? Knowledge is power. I mean, that's where we get this this saying. And so when it comes to the sharing of knowledge, it's always it's always a loaded exchange. The currency of humans is knowledge. And we'll need to remember that the term Reciprocity describes the exchange of knowledge, and it's extremely important to know that knowledge is never free. It always has strings attached. If you're like me, I think you'll begin to see that this is true. Everything has a string. As a human, I'm going to share knowledge that's important to me and who I am or who we are as a group with another individual or another group in order to bring them in, in order to say yes to them, I affirm you, I'm willing to kind of share my lot with you. Whatever happens to me happens to you. Whatever happens to you happens to me. So we need to know the same stuff. So so sharing information would be a very primitive act of trying to old human relationship because because you wouldn't share information with your enemy, No, you would not. So if I'm a hunter gatherer tribe and we have a knowledge of how to make a certain type of arrowhead. You've talked a lot about the Fulsome points or the Clovis points. That information was over a thousand years disseminated near and far. You can guarantee that as it was disseminated, there are hunter gatherer bands that were in competition with other bands, they would not be that quick to share with them, or if they did share, they did it for advantage, for security, for peace, for safety, because they thought it would be better for them. You know, when you think about humanity and kind of this idea of a primitive human, it would make sense that there would be kind of a deep psychology around how we distribute knowledge. It's so close to us, though most of us, including myself, have rarely really thought about it. To help understand it's fundamental currency, it will help to get some deep history on secret knowledge and how we've used it. Humans have been keeping secrets and sharing secrets since the beginning. That's certainly the case. No one would debate that. But really in a kind of a historical written down literature, since what when it really first hits the fan when it comes to secret knowledge is in uh, something called gnosticism in the Greco Roman world, and the word noses where where we get gnosticism means secret knowledge, And so the Greco Roman world for the first time humanity, at least in the Roman you know, empire, a lot of them have money and a lot of them have means, and so they're not living day to day, and they're not depending on practical, tangible activities to define themselves. So now they're looking for a new way to have kind of this home that's can system now theoretical knowledge home that they share with other people who also know these secret facts. And so all throughout the Roman Empire have these things called mystery cults that creep up. Some of them were religious and would offer what you know, we might call a way of salvation. A lot of them were just social clubs, like fraternal orders that have these secret rights and passages, and not a lot of the fraternal orders that exist today are kind of rooted from the world, Yeah, came from this kind of Roman philosophy of a way to have a sanctuary, a place of peace and security and validation is to know something secret and share that secret knowledge with others, select others, and so really it goes far back and then today you can see them. Humans haven't changed. We're still doing the same thing. People love secret knowledge because me and the folks who know what I know, we're in the end group and everybody else is in the out group. And all of a sudden, because I have a stable study in group, I can take a deep breath and all the time we are doing identity in this way. Someone who hunts like me, you know, someone who maybe as a bow hunter, somebody who watches their sense the way that I watch myself. I hate to bring this up, you know, I'm thinking this is an in group. Someone who who doesn't do that, well, they're on the outgroup. And you stay and you know, you stay loyal to the what, the things that we know and the things that we do, because that's who we are. It's a powerful mechanism. And what you don't do is share your knowledge, your secret knowledge, with anybody you wouldn't want in your group. Now we're starting to see the complexity of how we manage knowledge. Think about that fuzzy feeling, the bond between you and someone else when you share a juicy piece of information. It's very real. But at a deeper level, we use secret knowledg edge to build our personal identity. Our personal identity is who we believe ourselves to be. So dr D are you saying that me sharing a secret is more about me than the person I'm sharing it with. It can be so when you think about validation. If I'm in an in group as a hunter, who is an established hunter, and I know my trade and I know my skills. I'm gonna look around me and I want to add members to my group, and there's gonna be people who just have no question mark by their name. It's my children. I without doubt I will share anything with them so they could be in my group and be like me and do what I do if they want to. But then there are other folks who maybe there's no way I would want them competing for the same resources in the same way that I do, so, so in not sharing my knowledge with them, I am invalid aiding their identity. But it's a powerful, powerful statement. This is why knowledge is power. For me to give that knowledge to someone, because I'm saying I want you to be like me, and I want to share even more than that, I want to share identity with you. There it is. We often share knowledge to validate others, but ultimately so that they'll validate us. Whether it's family, a close friend, or someone you want to be friends with. That reciprocity the exchange of information signals and validates relationship. Why do you want to share a trail camera picture of a buck to someone that it's completely irrelevant to you want them to thank your cool legit and then to know. Probably this is as consistent as a gravity. Think about this. What do you do when you see the best deer hunter you know? You go and tell them about your dear honey. You're signaling that you're the same. Remember when I said dads can be val busters. It's because most to us have a desire to show our dads that were legit, and we want to share our lives with them. We do this stuff all the time. This might explain why on that cold November morning, I wanted so bad to share my secret with the hunting world. The release of that knowledge would have validated my personal identity. If I would have told them my secret, they would have said, oh man, that Clay is a real dear hunter. But I still haven't told you what my secret is. I may not talk to me about how dissemination of knowledge is a request for relationship. In that relationship as a string attached, which is this personal identity that I'm after. Absolutely, identity construction is something that every human engages in almost every conscious minute of their day, and even their subconscious We know it or not, Whether we know it or not, we are constantly constructing identity, and we're constantly asking for a secure, socially accepted identity. Even the people that say they're loners and they don't need anybody there, that's their identity. That is there, people that are extroverted and involved in social groups, and that's their identity. There's no there's not a human on the planet that is exempt from this. Even even a hermit living on a desert island. He is in pursuit of identity. He is in pursuit of an identity, and he's forming it socially. Even if he's forming it by being antisocial, it's still social. Is still in antisocial, it's still a social identity. And so when you look at identity formation. J Walter is a British sociologist and one of the main points that he's long since dead, but one of his main points is that as he was watching individualism really kind of gain its stride and and just hit its pace. One of his main point is that we are incapable of assigning our own identities. We try all day long, but it just leaves us insufficient. And what we need, every single one of us, to some extent, needs external validation. And so we talk about the dissemination of information, hunting secrets in this case, and we're relating that to identity. I am sharing information with you in no small part because I want you to validate me. I either want you to look at that photo and say, boy, Daniel, you are awesome or you did it, or I want you to turn around and share your photo of your big buck with me. And it says to me, we value each other. We look at each other, if not as equals, as worthy of being in the same in group. There's no rejection between you and I if we're sharing that knowledge, but if we're kind of playing our cards close, then either you or I one of us does not validate the other, and that's an assault on my socially accepted identity. So people are always ferreting out and hunting as it were, for these in groups that they can fit in. There's not a person on the planet that I think could wouldn't see that in themselves if they really looked at it, because it's so true when you really think about why you do what you do. So I asked some of these guys that I interviewed, I said, why do you share a picture with these people that you're close to. And I was kind of surprised because some of them weren't really able to articulate why. But when we builed it down, it was clear they're not sharing information with someone that they don't want to be friends with. They're not sharing information with their enemy, They're not sharing information with someone that they don't perceive as kind of equal to themselves. And they, oh, man, we're all we're all looking for validation from people in some ways, you know, trying to receive validation from someone else. You can quickly go down that road and see that that is not healthy, but they're parts of that that are very healthy. Sure, we are designed to live inside of community. We are, I mean, we're designed for relationship. And and Dan, I say this all the time, and I go back to it all the time. I think much of hunting, as would be much of any other kind of activity we engage with that involves other people, is really fueled by relationship. So and I think one of the things that makes hunting in particular so powerful relationally is it's practical, it's tangible, it's out in the world. You can't learn it off a video. You really need to be with someone who is an expert who has done it. You need to watch what they do. And this is what humans have been doing forever. It's a powerful interaction that as humans we just don't normally get because well, think about the way that a lot of humans right now, a lot of us do. Identity is digitally. So if if the need for validation is so huge and we all need it so deeply, and you would think all of these folks who have huge social media presence and they have all these followers, and they have all these likes, you would think, man, good night, they've got validation off the charts. Yet study after study after study. You know, doesn't matter if it's a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a counselor whoever did the study. Social scientists, psychologist, doesn't matter. Mental health decreases, while there's a correlation between mental health and yeah, you're in trouble. But that's true because so the longer you get pseudo validation from an impersonal source, the lower your mental health goes. The more validation you get from a real life, real human being who cares about you by sharing information with you, they're validating you. They're caring for you. The more stable and robust your identity is because it's not exclusively yours is shared, and that's the myth of the rugged individual. We were not always bringing it back to the We were not made to have identity in and of ourselves. We need it validated externally. This is fascinating stuff. And when we swoop back down to our specific topic, which is how we share hunting secrets, it even gets more interesting. When you are engaging in trading hunting information, you just stepped into the shoes or sandals or moccasin's crocs, crocs, brint reefs of humans for millennia. Whereas when we swipe our credit card, when I get out on my phone, I'm doing something that humanity has done for all of five minutes. But as a hunter, when I'm engaging and sharing hunting secrets or even just hunting knowledge, how do you shoot a bow? When I teach my son how to shoot a bow? I mean, that's an ancient transaction. It almost doesn't get more ancient than that. It just really doesn't. And because as a people, we are provided thanks to you know, major supermarkets and the supply chain, where most of us are not connected to farming. Most of us are not connected to agriculture. As hunters, we are connected to an activity that human kind has been engaged with from the beginning, all the way back. That's a fascinating thought because there's got to be in as much DNA and data that our minds, spirits, bodies operate off of that is not controlled by us. It's got I've got to believe that something triggers inside of the human when something really primitive is done, it's got to trigger something. I think kind of like a I don't know if you want to call it on a soul level or a deep cognitive level, when you share something that's tangible, practical, that came to you at a cost, and you share it in a way where you have to live it out in front of me. You know. I remember the first time I was in a tree stand. I was with you and you had me shoot at a stump. Yeah yeah, And I shot at a stump and you shared with me a way of being that I could emulate and do. That hits a person on a profound level. Most of our our interactions that exchanges on a day to day basis do not do that because they're so impersonal and they're so abstract, and I think because deep down, you're showing me a way to be, Whereas in every other transaction, I'm trying to essentially purchase an identity, I'm trying to gain an identity, or trying to learn about something else, just merely like up here my mind theoretically, But when I now, when I go out into the wood, I'm looking at a new plot of land, and I'm trying to figure out what's the best white oakre red oak to be around. And I find myself thinking, if Clay were here, what would he think and what would he do? I'm emulating you. I'd be looking for those acres, but looking for acres um you know, And that's a powerful way. I think. One of the myths of the rugged individualist is I can create and select an identity for myself. So much of the modern exchange of knowledge is impersonal and abstract. Think of the simple example of buying a banana. We've basically assigned abstract value to a note of tender, a dollar bill, and we trade that material object for the knowledge that it takes to farm, the work and the delivery of that banana to a grocery store. Money depersonalizes the exchange of knowledge and takes the relationship right out of it. We don't have to go to the farm and meet the farmer to get bananas. This idea leads us to and it's connected to why we can't get healthy personal identity from things that can be bought with money. True and healthy identity comes from relationships. That's a mic drop moment. I want to step back into my conversation with Rusty Johnson. He'll lead us into a discussion about social media, how we use it, how it's changed the way we share information and knowledge and receive validation. Here's Rusty and I think we got him trapped. And I still haven't told you my secret. So you are very tight with the information that you would portray. But sir, you have an Instagram page where you guys post pictures of alive dear all the time. Justify this for uh, That's that's a tough one out there. I'll just put it this way. We we don't post everything, but we we do post a lot. Have you ever thought about putting like a disclaimer on the tagline of your Instagram page that we post a lot of deer, but not all of them. But you this Instagram page, though, clearly shows that you have a deep desire to share these deer with people. Though, I mean, would you agree further viewing the pleasure? But what I found is that usually the thing that we're trying to guard the most is actually the thing we want to talk about the post. Would you agree with that? The secret pictures that you have on your phone, the dozen secret pictures, are those not the photos that you want to show me right now? I would like to Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean I like to see people have enjoyment through what we post on our Instagram and Facebook page. So it's about them. Are you sure about that? No? Social media has und audibly affected the way we share knowledge and build identity. It's unprecedented in human history. Here's Dr Dan and I exploring this topic. If we're talking about secrets, we're talking about the dissemination of knowledge, some of it intimate knowledge. Man, Only in the last fifteen years have we had at our fingertips the ability to communicate with people. How do you think social media is scrambling the human brain? Oh? My goodness, So I think what social media one of the positive things about social media is you don't have to say goodbye to as many people, so we can clean we can keep acquaintances and people in our lives that normally, apart from the Internet and connectivity, we would lose touch with humans. Not only were we not made to be alone, you know, like we said, even the kind of the monk who's on an island by himself is still creating a socially constructed identity. We also weren't made to stay in touch with everybody we've ever known. Every This is new man. Okay, if you think about it like this. Humans used to be full time hunters, so we file the way hunting info. Now we have less hunting info, but more like a rolodex of people because we keep up with these people. So maybe there's a correlation between having smaller Instagram followings and being better hunters. Do you see what I'm saying? I do have because there's space in a man's brain especially. This is nonsense. This is nonsense. But so the more people you are connected to doesn't necessarily result in the more actual validation you can get. You don't necessarily need more pseudo relationships. You need a healthy number of real solid relationships. And so if one of the kind of the crazy things that social media does to us is it's just this compounding, ever growing as you go to college and then you moved to another city, and you moved to another city, you can keep up with everybody another thing sing that's like me and the kids are TikTok oh, TikTok in it, you know. So another thing that social media does is it gives you the illusion of validation or invalidation. If I post something, I'm either getting a false positive feedback loop if a ton of people like it but maybe there's no value in it. But there's no value in it, or I get a negative feedback loop because nobody likes it, and either way I lose if I'm going to social media for validation. But the problem is is my brain when I pull up Facebook or Instagram, I'm not thinking I'm going to social media. I think I'm interacting with people because I'm looking at people, I'm seeing people's names, I'm seeing their faces, I'm remembering times that we were connected together. And because I'm wired as a human to construct identity and share it with others, I think I'm interacting with people but I'm not, and so I'm bound to fail unless I'm approaching social media from a secure places. It cause us to fail in it's it's where do we see the breakdown of a human inside of a false leaning up on this for their validation. So you're gonna have people who or they begin to orient larger and larger chunks of their days around their online presence or chunks of their finances, chunks of their resources, chunks of their time. Means fewer personal resources to give to actual people who can return actual validation, and then depression anxiety. So basically, a human has this allotted amount of energy to spend on relationship finite. And if we start leaning so heavy into social media that we're expending this into this like false thing, then we neglect. And this is maybe where the functional aspect is we neglect? Could we neglect the real relationships that we have? Absolutely? I mean this is you go, my family went out to eat last night at a restaurant. You look around the restaurant. Everybody's on their phones. Because what happens is is relating with real people. They're looking at you. So think about it. If what happens if I share a hunting secret with you and you don't reciprocate. That's scary. That affects who I am and my value and worth as an individual. But the cost, the short term cost of going online and looking at Facebook, is nothing but setting across from a real individual and not just opening up my hunting knowledge secrets, but opening up who I am as a person. Now you're talking things of real value and worth, and so now you're talking about real risk. And so it's supposedly kind of I'll do quotations around this finger. Supposedly safer for me to go to social media to be validated than it is for me to turn actually go and be a real thing in front of a real person. And one of the things that hunting forces you to do is just that you have to go out in the woods together do it, and do it together. I listened just yesterday to a podcast about the metaverse, which essentially is this idea that started a long time ago about how humans could one day live in a digital world. It was like a sci fi section of a book from some you know in the eighties or nineties. There's now with these video games and a bunch of different stuff. They're big groups really trying to build out commerce inside of the metaverse where I mean it's happening. It's like I think Microsoft just bought an online game for like seventy billion dollars, and it's because they see the market going to this digital market, which man just like every single thing that we see happen in life, it's like everything is going to a facade of what it appear years to be. Everything is propped up by a veneer of what it seems like it is, but when you tap into it, it's not that. And that is also the nature of humanity in a lot of ways. Facades make us. A really good facade makes you feel supposedly safe, secure and validated, but on the inside you're still not. So most of the things that we modern contemporary humans with a certain amount of wealth that we can expend, most of the things that we are purchasing our a facade. Think about even in the hunting community, all the gear, all the stuff. I can have, all this amazing gear, but if I don't relate with another hunter who's willing to validate me, is share with me his wisdom and me the same, I'll never be a good hunter. I've just purchased another facade, and so you know, meta, they're betting on humanity's propensity to go after facades. And I'm not like, I'm not at all. I mean want Instagram. I don't want social media, of course, but as humans, we have to understand our tendency to do identity and counter productive ways. Yeah, the idea with social media is that you almost have to be on it in some ways to be relevant, of course, And that's dumb to say, because you don't have to have social media to survive in today's world. Most people do, and it's just got to be handled in a balanced way, you know. And I think when we understand how the mind works, how we are on a constant search for identity, that it that that knowledge can give us tools to know how to manage stuff. And I know for sure, inside of my life, because I mean I do a lot of stuff on social media part of my job, I work extra hard to make sure that the real human relationships in my life are dialed up and dialed in, because yeah, it's just like, you know, you just don't want to be the guy that is a facade. Fascinating stuff, and we've just scratched the surface of it. As we come to a close, I want to summarize what we've learned and get back to our original question. Why do whitetail hunters keep secrets? Why do you think we're so finicky about the way that we distribute white tail hunting secrets? Several things, I don't want you in my spot. I don't want you. It's a it's a competition for a limited resource, so you're not going to share it with everybody. I think. Another thing is a fundamental insecurity. I'm not just gonna I'm not gonna just share my important knowledge with anybody, because again, what if they don't reciprocate well in a fundamental insecurity on the like, I'm hiding because I'm I'm afraid it's gonna be taken from me. Yeah, people are just insecure. We are insecure. Just like someone is gonna go on Pinterest. You know, my my wife might get on Pinterest and select certain things to be on her Pinterest page. She's gonna select the things that she feels like reflects who she is. If I go to Lows or home Depot and pick out new light fixtures for a home and do that, I'm not just gonna pick out random ones. I'm gonna pick out the ones that I feel like reflect who I am. Same way when it comes to choosing who I share information with, I'm gonna share information with people who I feel like are sufficiently like me or people that I want to be like. And so that's a very finicky kind of particular process. I don't just share with anybody. You've made a lot of jokes about how someone says acorn or acorn. You know, we have all these kind of ear markers a joke, You're an idiot. We have all these these earmarks of who is in and who is out, and so much of human thinking is in group out group thinking. You know, you think you look at our nation and how polarized it is, and fairly quickly I can tell who is in whatever my supposed in that sphere of influence in group is and who is out, and that's where information goes or with the out group, that is not where information goes. In closing, I want to tell you just a little bit about my secret in I had a big deer on camera. For me, it was like a once in a decade type deer hundred and fifty engineer after a bullet malfunction on my muzzle loader and amidst the deer lived in one he grew a lot and turned into a once in a lifetime deer. The prior season, my strategy had been locked box lips, especially with neighboring landowners that had access to this deer. But later in the season I adopted a different strategy of openness. I made an unusual move. I decided to coop information with the other people that I knew were after him. I agreed to share all the info. I had no secrets. It was risky and went against everything I'd ever done. I chose to share all my trail campics within a few hours of getting them with the other guys that were hunting this deer. Why and I didn't ask for anything in return, But if I'm being honest, I imagined that I would get stuff in return. I was willing to be the first to release information. I was desperate, but my motives were probably far from altruistic. I knew that they would give me information that I needed as well, but it seemed kind of fair. The results of the experiment were entirely positive, though none of us killed the buck, I shared valuable information that helped the other landowners, and in turn, they shared info with me. At the end of the day, the release of that secret information did exactly what Dr Dan said it would do. It built trust and relationship between myself and these guys that I don't think will go away anytime soon. Sadly, we believe the Buck to be dead. Who else did I share these secret pictures with? You might ask, I can't tell you. That's a secret. I've learned a lot about myself by talking with Mosley, Curly and Dr Dan. I continue to be amazed at the undeniable magnetic attraction for humans to build personal identity. You do it even if you don't think you are like an emerald headed Ballard duck going to the acorns and rice. We just can't help it. These secrets we keep and release are important components of relationship and identity building. Keeping secrets also has some really functional aspects to them, like we don't want a bunch of hillbillies piling into our spots, But it's deeper. The quickest way to offend someone is to invalidate their perceived personal identity. Fist fights, murders, wars, and unbridled wrath have been released by people because of infractions on their identity. We spend our whole lives building it, and appealing to someone's personal identity is also the quickest way to someone's heart and to engender their trust. Obviously, this can be done in healthy and unhealthy ways, genuine and non genuine ways, But in the end, we want to be surrounded by people who view us as we believe ourselves to be and hopefully who we actually are. Humans are designed to live in close orbit with people, and these people around this build our identity. It's grounding to me to realize that people's perception of us is far less important than the meat of the matter, which is who we actually are. Better to be thought and idiot, but be intelligent than to be thought intelligent and be an idiot. In the world that's increasingly digital and impersonal, it's easier than ever to live behind the facade, knowing that external possessions give the illusion of identity, and that that's a really old trick. I'm hoping that all this talk will help me focus on actual character and actual substance who I am when nobody's watching. I'm a big fan of that kind of talk, but talk is cheap anyway. Next season, when you get a picture of a big buck or a big bear, keep track of who you share it with and how you manage your own secrets, and you just might learn something about yourself. Thanks so much for listening to bear Grease. Hey, check out Meat Eats Season ten, Part two on Netflix if you haven't, and check out the Bargrease merch on the meat eater dot com. And thanks to Toime for all your support on this podcast. Please share this podcast with friend and folk, even share it with your grandma who knows she might like it. And hey, before we close, here's a bonus section of Dan Rupe ringing the Truth out of Me Clay nucom How many photos do you have on your phone that no one else has seen? Secret photos? Secret photos? These photos would be a combination that are mine that I don't share, but also photos that people have sent me that I've vowed to not show. And I would say that at any given time, if you were to scroll through my saved pictures on my phone, there would be three to six pictures of white tailed deer that have some semblance of a vow made to someone else or to myself that I wasn't that I wouldn't share freely with anybody. There's there's different variations of this, because there's some pictures that I would share with Joe on the street if I was walking down the street and he had a camo hat and we stopped together, and I'll be like, man, you a deer hunter, and I'll be like, look at the stair I got a picture of. But they're also there's three to six that that would never happen to know, here's a question for you. Let's say somebody shares with you they're inside info. Maybe it's a picture from the trail camp. Oh yeah, your mr go to. My question is can you be trusted? Hey? That is a very real question that every one of us wager on our friend all the time. And so you're asking me, I'm not if I'm trustworthy? Yeah, this is a it's a yes or no. You've not answered, but the answer the answer is yes. I if you sent me a picture that you specifically asked me not to share with anyone, I would I would honor that. Okay, it sounds to me like one you're trying to convince yourself that you're trustworthy to what if I sent you a photo and I didn't explicitly say, hey, Clay, keep this one to yourself, but you knew you knew I didn't want this going every Okay, then it's it's sort of off the table if you don't if you give me information that does not come with specific instructions, then it's off the table. Now. Granted, I I'm not stupid, and if somebody's sharing information with me, like, I'm gonna typically act inside of like a code of honor, which I'm not gonna go like put that on Instagram and say, Jim said, this picture of this buck you got on his lease. But if you sent me a picture and you don't say don't share this with someone, and I'm compelled by that picture, I'm compelled by something about it, the size of the buck, where it was, at the time it was, at what it was doing. I mean, I'll show that to Bill on the street. So that's okay. What I think what's disturbing to me is even when you said I would say don't share this one with anybody, you said typically you would act within a code of well listen, so there is there are therefore instances where you would betray my trust? Okay, regardless of the situation. I guess what we're talking about is how to the letter of the law that someone is gonna be I don't think we're talking about someone. I think we're talking about you and what you're made. Listen, you send me a picture of your big buck that and you say, Clay, don't share this with anybody? Can I show it to my wife? Is your wife? Anybody she is? So I've broken your trust? Can I show it to my dad? Who will not know where that information came from? Will not I mean, has no connection. Don't you don't you understand that this is how the floodgates get open. It's exactly how they get open, Dan, And that is exactly why that I've been burned. I have been burned by people. And what I because this is what I've learned, okay, is it's not me that you have to worry about. It's the person I share it with. So I get your picture and I'm just sharing this with you because I have grown. Okay, I have grown. I get a picture from you this jot buck, and I go, man, oh, Gary Nuclem, He's not gonna go in there and kill that dear. He's not gonna it doesn't matter. And so I go, look at this picture that Bill sent me. I've swore to Bill that I wasn't gonna show anybody. This is a made up scenario. This is never hap purely hypothetical. I showed it to Gary and again, I'm not the one you have to worry about, because I'm not gonna go on your spot. I'm not gonna tell the information to someone that would use that information to capitalize on your spot. But you know who doesn't have loyalty to Billy, Gary Nuco Now it doesn't have any loyalty to Bill, doesn't know Bill, you know Gary. The next day goes man, I saw a picture of a big buck that came out of bleepity bleep management area just yesterday. And he tells that to pick someone and bam, the thing just you've lost it all. So that's where people aren't trustworthy is the trusted person that they tell Because my trusted person isn't your trusted person. You can see what I'm saying. Yeah, And so I have started to when I share deep secrets for other people, like say, don't share this with anybody, not even your dad, not even your brother. You know, can you keep this secret? So one of the things about being in a relationship with you that's challenging is you are actually dividing families. I mean, you are keeping people from communicating with their own family members. I mean, didn't tell there